MCDONOUGH — Eagle’s Landing Christian Academy continued their dominance in the Class A-Private 400-meter relay, winning their fifth state title in the event in the last seven seasons last weekend at the state meet.

The Chargers repeated as champions, this time with a different group. Justin Menard returned from injury last season as the centerpiece of the group, and was joined by Nate McCollum, Keaton Mitchell and Khaleb Hood, all of whom excel on the football field as well. ELCA did so even after replacing the speedy Jeffrey Uzzell, the team’s top performer last season before he graduated last spring.

“Last year you probably had a faster four,” ELCA head coach Scott Queen said. “When you lose Jeffery Uzzell, who is a 10.50, and Justin wasn’t able to run last year because he had a torn meniscus — if we ever had Justin and Jeffrey on the same team, last year we could have put it together. It was exciting. This was a great group, solid, very consistent.”

Queen’s choice of lineup got the most out of the team. McCollum led off for the Chargers and was followed by Menard, Hood and Mitchell, respectively.

“The thing about this group is we had a brand new leadoff in Nate McCollum, who is a stud on the football field, who was just a solid leadoff,” Queen said. “Then came our fastest guy in Justin Menard, who corrected anything that might have been wrong in our leadoff leg. Khaleb Hood, another great football player, was just a bulldog on the third leg. He covered things up because he was just so solid. Then you hand it off to your second fastest guy, Keaton Mitchell, a young pup who is flying.”

ELCA had success throughout the season, including a memorable trip to Florida State University to run in the Florida State Relays. The 400-meter relay team topped the field with a time of 41.81, the third-fastest time in the history of the meet.

“Doing what we did at Florida State was great, it was unbelievably fun,” Queen said. “But we talked about that not being the highlight of the year. Who cares if you win at Florida State if you can’t win the state championship?”

The Chargers continued through the season, winning the Region 3 A-Private championship. The four competitors, each friends off the track, pushed each other in practice, which improved the time of the overall collection.

“Practice is deadly. It’s not about who is the fastest, it’s about maintaining it throughout the race,” McCollum said. “We don’t want to be in the back. It’s a competition, everybody wanted to be in the front.”

In the end, it paid off. ELCA’s time of 41.43 set a state record for Class A. It was also a school record.

“It was a great year because we broke our school record and the state 4x100 record for private schools with a 41.43. We broke that,” Menard said.

The good news for ELCA? Three members of the relay team will return in 2019, making the Chargers an early favorite to win next year’s team state title.

“I didn’t know we would run as fast as we did, but that’s probably a top-five time in Georgia right now,” Queen said. “It was a good group. The other great thing is everybody is coming back.”